The New Jerusalem
After the judgment, the veil lifts on what has no end. The two last chapters of Revelation are among the most luminous of the whole Bible: they describe the new world God prepares, the term toward which all history was tending without knowing it. It is not the destruction of the world, but its transfiguration: all that was good is taken up, purified, fulfilled. The whole creation finds there its completion, and redeemed humanity enters into joy without shadow. On this vision of hope, holy Scripture closes.
A new heaven and a new earth
John then contemplates the great promise: “a new heaven and a new earth.” Revelation 21:1 The old world, marked by sin and death, gives way to a renewed creation. And he sees coming down from heaven the holy city, the new Jerusalem, beautiful as a bride adorned for her bridegroom. A powerful voice from the throne proclaims the heart of the promise: “Behold, the Dwelling of God with men! He will dwell with them.” Revelation 21:3 It is the fulfillment of the whole design of God from the beginning: to dwell in the midst of his people. What the Temple announced, what the Incarnation had inaugurated, becomes eternal: God and man reunited forever, no longer separated by sin, but united in an intimacy without end. This promise fulfills that of the prophets. Isaiah had heard God announce that he would create new heavens and a new earth, where the past sorrows would be remembered no more; Ezekiel had promised, in the name of God, my dwelling will be above them, I will be their God and they will be my people. What these prophets announced to an exiled and wounded people, Revelation shows fulfilled for the whole of humanity. The most ancient dream of the Bible, that of a God who dwells with men, ceases to be a promise and becomes an eternal reality.
No more tears
The description of this happiness passes through what will be banished from it. In the city of God, all that makes man weep will have vanished: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; death will be no more.” Revelation 21:4 Neither grief, nor crying, nor pain: the old world, with all its sufferings, will have passed. This gesture of God who wipes away the tears of each one, as a father consoles his child, tells an infinite tenderness. Then the One who sits on the throne speaks a word that sums up the whole work of salvation: “Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5 God does not merely repair the old world, he recreates it. Christian hope does not aim at a return to the past, but at a radical newness, where all that has been loved and lost will be given back, transfigured and forever.
The city of God
An angel shows John the city in detail, and its description is a poem of light. The new Jerusalem shines with the glory of God; its walls are of precious stones, its gates of pearls, its streets of pure gold. Twelve gates, twelve foundations, bear the names of the tribes of Israel and of the apostles: the old and the new people of God are reunited there in a single city. But the most astonishing is what John does not see there: there is no temple, for the Lord God and the Lamb are themselves its temple. There is neither sun nor moon, for the glory of God illumines it, and the Lamb is its torch. In this city, nothing any longer screens God from man: he is seen face to face, one lives in his light. This is the beatific vision, the goal of all Christian life. This city of light gathers all the visions of the prophets. Isaiah had sung a Jerusalem illumined not by the sun but by the glory of God, toward which the nations would bring their treasures; Ezekiel had seen a river spring from the Temple and give life to all it touches, and John finds it again, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, bordered by the tree of life. What the prophets had contemplated in fragments, like the scattered pieces of one same dream, Revelation reunites in the definitive city, where God will be all in all.
Come, Lord Jesus
The book, and with it all the Bible, ends on a dialogue of desire. The Spirit and the Church, like a betrothed who awaits her beloved, turn their cry toward Christ: “The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!” Revelation 22:17 And the Lord answers that he is coming soon. Then rises, in echo, the last prayer of Scripture: “Come, Lord Jesus!” Revelation 22:20 It is the cry of the Church of every age, which the liturgy has kept in its Aramaic form, Maranatha, our Lord, come. All the Bible, begun with the creation of the world, thus closes on a burning expectation: that of the return of Christ and the fulfillment of all things. The last word of the Word of God is not a threat, it is a call of love, the longing of the believer toward the One who comes.